Exceedingly Mundane

We always look forward to seeing a couple of “big screen” movies at our local theater in the summer. This year is no exception. In fact, I think there may be even more movies than usual that we are interested in seeing on the big screen! 🙂

How about you? Are there any movies you, or your family, are looking forward to seeing this summer? Leave me a comment, or vote in the poll. I’m sure there are more movies than this, but these are some of the ones we are interested in, or that I thought others might be interested in!

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I think we’ll try to see Wolverine, Star Trek and Terminator at least, and maybe a couple of others. I’m sure there will be plenty that I’d be willing to wait on, for them to come out on DVD (for example, Night at the Museum 2). And I know we won’t see Harry Potter. I haven’t read the books and neither of us have seen any of the movies. I know, I know, we’re oddballs on the Harry Potter front 🙂

Have a great day 😀

I seem to have lost most of the month of April. My father-in-law went into the hospital on Wednesday, April 8 for surgery and was just released yesterday, Wed 4/22. We’re very grateful that he was able to go home and is doing good. After surgery (he had a hernia on his esophagus), he developed a blood clot that moved to his lungs, called a pulmonary embolism. He spent his birthday and Easter Sunday in ICU. After coming out of ICU, he spent over a week, trying to get his meds regulated. They could never get it all right, so they finally discharged him with shots and pills. He’s taking Lovenox shots twice a day (heparin shots) and is on Coumadin as an anti-coagulant to prevent more clots. Apparently, Coumadin is a “finicky” drug and is hard to regulate, as each person is different. Anyway, we’re just glad he’s doing well and is at home now.

It’s warmed up here in the last few weeks. It’s nice outside, the breeze is blowing and it smells so… fresh! After spending so many days in the hospital, breathing antiseptic laden recycled air, it’s so nice to smell fresh spring air! I’m also amazed at how things are growing. And how much I’m looking forward to getting some flowers to plant. And how many weeds have sprung up in my flower beds. I mean, really, why do those things have to pop up where they don’t belong?! 😀

Today it’s supposed to hit 88 degrees here. Which makes me sad, because I’ll have to break down and turn our A/C on in the house. I just hope it works!

How about you? Anything exciting going on in your neck of the woods? What’s the weather like where you are, and if you live in the South, do you have your A/C running yet?

Have a great day! 😀

When I met Tim, I didn’t drink coffee or tea. When we were dating, I started drinking sweet tea (it has to have sweetener in it, I can’t drink it unsweetened). I learned to drink the occasional hot tea over the years, mostly in the winter to warm up, or if I wanted something for a sore throat. I went about nine long years before I ever ventured into the coffee world. I remember it clearly – we were on vacation in Texas and for some reason, Tim kept badgering me to try coffee. I have learned to drink it over the years – again, like tea, it has to be highly sweetened and it must have a lot of creamer in it. Tim jokingly calls it “hot cocoa” because he said it doesn’t resemble coffee by the time I’m finished with mixing stuff in it. I call it “beige” or “khaki” because it has to look a very light color and not smell much like coffee for me to be able to knock it back 😀 Tim, on the other hand, only drinks it black.

When Tim started working part-time from home, we started making more coffee on a regular basis. When he proceeded to working full-time from home, our coffeemaker went into overdrive. We make, on average, 12 cups a day, 7 days a week, in our trusty little Cuisinart coffee pot. In case you’re math-challenged, that’s 84 cups a week. Needless to say, we go through a lot of coffee! And not just any coffee. Tim is very particular about his beans. He likes them dark and rich, a very good roast. We started out with Community Coffee and he was okay with that for a while. Somewhere along the way, he decided that wasn’t what he wanted, and we progressed to other beans and brands. We settled, surprisingly enough, on a whole bean from Sam’s Club – their Marques de Pavia brand (however you spell it!). We’ve been buying beans there, faithfully, for several years. The main thing I liked about buying our coffee there, was that it was in larger quantities, which we so desperately needed. Not to mention that it was cheaper than other brands. When our Fresh Market opened a year ago, we started buying beans occasionally in there, just to try. So far, Tim has liked all of them (no flavored beans, no decaf beans, please). But, they’re pricey, 9.99 a pound.

Then, around Christmas, I started having trouble finding our whole beans at Sam’s Club. I thought, it’s Christmas, they’ll get them back in soon. We bought beans at other places and “made do.” Then weeks turned into months, and we could never find our favorite beans. We had to even go so far as to start buying Starbucks at Sam’s Club. Much more costly, and honestly, I don’t like their coffee as much. I think the beans themselves smell bitter and too strong and I was not fond of the final product either (although Tim liked it). We were both so tickled to go into our Sam’s this past weekend, and find that they were once again carrying the Marques brand of bean. They had a breakfast blend, a medium blend, a French Roast blend, and Tim’s favorite – the dark roast. I tried to talk him into trying a different one, but he was happy to go back to his old standard. We “only” bought two bags. I’m hoping we didn’t make a mistake and they stop carrying them again, or they run out. We were both so happy to find them again – we’ve both mentioned it several times to each other since shopping there that “oh, I’m so glad to have our coffee back”. 😀 Yes, we’re nerds on a much grander scale than you know!

So, how about you? Are you a coffee drinker? A tea drinker? Both? Neither? Vote in the poll and leave me a comment if you want. I’m sure none of you are as avid about your drinks as we are (don’t get me started on the obscene amount of Coke Zero we purchase, that’s a whole ‘nother post!!!) 😀

Cheers!

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Since I don’t have cute kids to post pictures and videos of, you have to see my furry child. 🙂

I told Tim not more than 10 days after we picked up Beau from the foster home where he was living, that I was so glad that we got a dog with “extra personality”. Beau is a very vocal dog. It’s funny, because the couple at the foster home told us, he never barks, he’s very quiet. Good grief, they could not have been more wrong! Beau barks all.the.time. He speaks all.the.time. He’s a very vocal dog. And we LOVE IT!

Usually, when I get out the camera or camcorder, he shuts up. But a week or so ago, he kept going, even after I turned on the camcorder. The video is a little over a minute long. Probably too long for most of you, but at least give it a few seconds. You can hear Tim in the background offering a running commentary:

“Oh be quiet”
“What are you doing?
“You’re not worth nothing!!”
“Oh good gracious”
And my favorite at the end … “Do you want a treat?” – to which Beau responds by whipping his head around so fast, he must have given himself whiplash! 😀

Here’s my sweet Beau, having a grand ole time 🙂

We had a really nice weekend. Nothing special, but it was a beautiful spring weekend, and we spent a lot of time outside. Saturday, we stayed busy outside in the yard and on the deck. Tim did a lot more work than I did (I still haven’t totally shaken this sickness thing and I don’t feel 100% yet).

We live near a small airport, and apparently some WW II planes were practicing for an upcoming airshow, or just having fun. They flew over several times during the afternoon and I had a good time trying to run inside and grab my camera when I heard them flying over. I missed them mostly, but got a couple of almost decent shots:

For lunch, we drove to our favorite crawfish place and picked up a big bag of hot goodies: crawfish, sausage, corn and potatoes. We came home and had a picnic on our deck – it was the perfect weather for it and we had both really been looking forward to our first crawfish of the season. Here’s the before and after shots – in case you can’t tell, the before shot is pretty steamy, because of all the steam coming up from the paper bag!

While Tim was cutting the grass, I noticed a butterfly flitting around my verbena, which has one patch that has come back and is blooming beautifully. Even though verbena should attract butterflies and hummingbirds, mine only seems to attract bees. My backyard is full of bumblebees, flying around the flowers and wanting to sting me and Beau 🙂 Finally though, I have spotted a butterfly. And I had my camera out, waiting on the airplanes to fly over, so I was able to snag a decent shot:

Last but not least, Tim picked up a new hummingbird feeder for me at Lowe’s. I had pulled out my old one to fill up and hang up and he looked at it and said, I’m throwing this away. I was like, oh no you don’t, there’s nothing wrong with it and I want my hummingbird feeder. It did leak a little and was looking a little ragged, so he tossed it in the garbage. He was very thoughtful though, and bought me this beautiful new one:

Hope you had a good weekend, too!

Where does one begin a blog post, when you have gone so long without posting? New territory for me. I’ve taken short breaks before, and longer breaks when we’ve had computer or Internet issues, but never a break this long.

For starters, I wasn’t sure I was going to post again. I’m still on the fence but willing to keep trying. Mostly, I don’t like to be a quitter 🙂 I have four years of blogging going on here that a part of me hates to just… abandon.

I haven’t felt the need to blog lately. One reason is that for the last 9 or 10 days, I’ve been sick. I haven’t been this sick in a while. I lost two days from running a fever, sleeping most of the time, and laying in a dark and quiet room for nearly 48 hours. Sinus migraine type headaches are no fun. When my head feels like the size of Jupiter and it’s trying to all fit inside my small cranium, then stuff hurts.

I didn’t turn my computer on at all for a week. That’s another first for me. You know what – I didn’t miss it at all! Not only was I not blogging, I wasn’t checking email, I wasn’t reading blogs, I wasn’t checking Facebook, I wasn’t reading tweets on Twitter, I wasn’t surfing online to read about stuff, look stuff up or even play games. I haven’t really wanted to get back to it, but I feel like I have to. Isn’t that sad?!

Anyway, I’ll try to think of something to blog about. I’ll have to go back to extremely mundane thoughts. A book, a song, a reality tv show, a picture of my puppy. Something inane, I guess. 🙂

How about this for starters – I actually watched Dancing with the Stars this week. I used to love that show. I don’t get to watch it much any more because, we also DVR Chuck, Heroes, and 24 on Mondays. The DVR can only handle so much, unfortunately. However, I was impressed with a couple of dancers, including whoever the Melissa girl is from the Bachelor (never watched that one). I also called and lodged my first votes for American Idol this year. I was a Danny/Anoop fan, and still am, but my new favorite contestant, hands down, is Kris Allen. I think he’s awesome, and I’m going to vote for him as long as he continues to impress me every week 😀

Hope all is well out there in blogland!

P.S. I’m trying out a new template for spring and summer. I’ve had another one on here that I liked better (red), but in IE, the comments are HUGE. I hope this one is alright in whatever browser you use. Please let me know if you have any problems or complaints about it 🙂 I like the ocean side of it, the “earth” side is a little dark for me, but still nice. The “ocean” part of it looks like summer to me 😀

My buddy Desert Songbird tagged me with this fun photo meme that I’ve seen going around. I have been in a decidedly untagging mood lately, but I also have had trouble coming up with something to blog about! I’m still really on the fence about continuing to blog. I just can’t think of anything interesting to yack about any more 🙂 Anyway, I thought I’d play along with this one. It’s always fun to look back at old photos.

Here’s the rules:
1. Go to your Picture Folder on your computer or wherever you store your pictures.
2. Go to the 6th Folder and then pick the 6th Picture.
3. Post it on your blog and tell the story that goes with the picture.
4. Tag 5 other glorious peoples to do the same thing and leave a comment on their blog tellin’ them ’bout it.

I’ve only had my laptop a couple of years, so these pictures are fairly recent. This was taken back in late summer 2007. I was really pleased to see that the sixth photo in my sixth folder was one of my favorite subject – Beau! Tim would say that is because I take more photos of our dog than anything else!

I’m supposed to tag 5 others, but as I mentioned, I’ve been in a real un-tagging mood lately. So, I’ll just leave this one open, and if you’d like to play along, please do!

Have a great day 🙂

I read online over the weekend, that in addition to Saturday being Valentine’s Day, that it was also National Donor’s Day. Apparently, this was started in 1998, but I think it might have been the first time I’ve heard of this holiday. I imagine it’s hard to get more press than Valentine’s Day, with its flowers and candy 🙂

Anyway, I thought this would be a good Question of the Day. I’m not a blood donor (I have a serious needle aversion), but I am an organ donor. And I have been for many years. I don’t know when I’m going to die or how, but when I do go, I hope that I have something or some part that would help someone else live a better life. I’ve told my family that they can have any and every part of me that they can use. If there’s not enough left to bury, they can just cremate me. After all, I’ll already be home in heaven, so it won’t matter much to me.

So, how about you? Are you a blood donor or an organ donor? Vote in the poll or leave me a comment and let me know what you think. Hope you have a great day!

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P.S. Today is my sister Gail’s birthday! Not a very cheery post today from me on her birthday, so hop on over to her blog and wish her a Happy Birthday 😀

You gotta love this time of year! It can sometimes be about flowers and chocolate. 😀

Tim surprised me on Thursday, and said he wanted to take me out for an early Valentine’s dinner at Biaggi’s, which is one of our favorite places. We don’t go out for Valentines Day any more. We did when we were dating and the first few years we were married. Then, one year on Valentines Day, we waited two hours for a table, then had mediocre food and service at a place that normally has wonderful food and excellent service. That did it for us – we decided we’d just as soon stay at home and grill a steak and not feel compelled to go out for a nice dinner on that day, just because someone else says we should. We certainly go out to eat plenty of other times during the year.

It was a nice surprise though, and we had a good dinner. Then, we went to Fresh Market afterwards, another place I love. I told Tim, if we were rich, I’d shop in there every week! But, it’s nice to save it for splurges or special things. I love food and love to shop for food, so that place is heaven for me.

Here’s a few pictures, always more fun than my long boring posts!

Red tulips for me, and a box of truffles Tim bought me at Fresh Market:

And the tulips up close:

You can’t tell what’s in here, but this is our leftovers from Biaggi’s. That’s either today’s lunch or tonight’s supper! Tim had shrimp and crab cannelloni and I had penne sardi. Both delicious!

We picked up some gourmet brownies from the bakery in Fresh Market which will be our Valentines dessert (we’re grilling out ribeyes and will have salad, sweet potatoes and grilled asparagus for dinner):

Lastly, we got a new happy to fill our crystal candy dish in the den… at Christmas, we got soft peppermint sticks from Fresh Market, then after that, we got some organic truffles. Now, we got a big thing of chocolate covered peanuts, one of their “Items of the Month” up front:

Can you tell that I’ve been craving chocolate lately?!

Anyway, we’ve already had one Valentines celebration here, with dinner out and all these goodies. We’ll have another Saturday night. How about you? Do you have plans for Valentines Day? Eating in or out or something special with your spouse and/or kids? Hope you have a wonderful weekend, whatever you do 😀

Or at least, washing dishes is fun for a few days, LOL!

The sprayer on my kitchen sink broke in early December, and I told Tim we should just wait till after Christmas to replace it. That led to early February, but it all worked out really well for me. We looked at Lowe’s and didn’t see just a replacement sprayer (although Tim told me later he did find one), so we decided to get a whole new faucet set. My sink and faucet are original to the house, so they are over 15 years old. One of us said something to the effect of “it sure would be a shame to put a nice, shiny new faucet on that old, scratched up, rusted sink”. I can’t remember who said that at the moment 😀 Anyway, I picked out a new sink too. I really like being able to pick out fixtures and lighting and stuff to replace what we have here. Everything put in by the builder was the lowest level possible, so now I have a nicer sink, two inches deeper, and a nicer faucet that doesn’t leak, with a sprayer that works. Ah, washing dishes is fun again!

Here’s the old one:

And the nice shiny new one:

So, that leads to an unusual Question of the Day: Do you have a good cleaner for stainless steel? Or any tricks to keeping my new sink as clean and shiny and protected for as long as possible? I have always used BarKeeper’s Friend (a powder, sort of like Comet) or SoftScrub on my sink, but I’m wondering if I should be using something else. Something for stainless or something special for sinks. It sure has a lot of water spots all the time!

Leave me a comment and let me know if you have any tips or suggestions on keeping a stainless steel sink clean. And have a great day!

Since our website was down (and therefore my blog), I haven’t been able to post any updates on the books I’ve been reading so far in 2009. I have, however, been keeping up at GoodReads, so hopefully most of those who might be interested in what I’ve read or my thoughts on those books are following me over there. In case there are any who aren’t, I thought I’d do a quick rundown on some of the books I’ve been reading lately.

So far this year, I’ve completed 9 books, including 4 for the two reading challenges I am participating in. I’ve read:

1. Through the Grinder by Cleo Coyle (cozy mystery, part of a series about murders revolving around the owner of a coffeehouse in New York City)

2. Happily Ever After by Susan May Warren (cute Christian chick-lit/romance book, my first by this author but it won’t be the last, counts toward my Chick-Lit Challenge)

3. Life Support by Tess Gerritsen (medical mystery, second book by this author that I’ve read and liked, counts towards the What’s in a Name challenge, category of medical condition)

4. The Way We Were by Judy Baer (part of the Guidepost series, Tales from the Grace Chapel Inn, easy and enjoyable Christian fiction)

5. Nights of Rain and Stars by Maeve Binchy (one of hers I had not read, not my favorite of hers, but not bad, counts towards the What’s in a Name Challenge, category of time of day)

6. Booked to Die by John Dunning (first in the Cliff Janeway series, I’m on the fence about continuing with these)

7. Rorey’s Secret by Leisha Kelly (continuing story of the Wortham and Hammond families, wonderful Christian fiction books I’m reading)

8. Whispers of the Bayou by Mindy Starns Clark (Christian mystery, not part of the Million Dollar or Smart Chick mysteries but still a good read)

9. The Broker by John Grisham (one of the many Grisham books we own I have not read, not my favorite but still enjoyable, counts toward the What’s in a Name Challenge, category of profession)

I’m going to include a few of the blurbs I wrote over at GoodReads about a few of these on the extended page, please click on the “Please read more” if you’re interested and want to read them.

For the record, I’ve read 9 books so far in 2009, for a total of 2,884 pages. Up next is the first in the Spa Girls series by Kristin Billerbeck (“She’s All That”). I’ll count all three of these towards my 10 required for the Chick-Lit Challenge.

Happy Reading!

Read the rest of this entry »

Our website, and therefore my blog, was down during Super Bowl weekend, but I wanted to go back and post a little about it. We had a really good time, as always, and a house full this year. All of Tim’s family and my dad came, which was great. My dad will turn 86 in April, so it’s really good that he’s still able to get out and about, and come visit us a bunch. We also had some friends and extended family here. All in all, I think we had about 20 people or so.

Tim and I went on Saturday to Sam’s Club and bought food for the party. Note to self – if you take Tim, expect to load up on meat. It was definitely a male-oriented, cholesterol laden, meat festival at our house on Sunday. 😀 We had hamburgers, hot dogs, smoked sausage, 3 flavors of wings (thanks Terry!), a sausage stuffed/bacon wrapped concoction (thanks Mark!) that I dubbed the Bacon-ator. We had Lil’ Smokies, a meat and cheese platter, a vegetable tray, several kinds of dips and chips, Chex Mix, potato salad, fruit, and a double decker cookie cake for dessert. I had three things that I had planned for later in the day (game time or half time), but everyone filled up at lunchtime on the food we had, then nibbled throughout the afternoon and early evening. So, I put those into the freezer and we’ll have to plan another party so we can eat that food up 🙂 As it is, Tim and I have been eating leftovers all week, which has been wonderful. I got out of cooking for many days! Since we purchased everything and Tim did the grilling, I was home free for this year’s party. I think that’s definitely the way to go, at least for me! Isn’t that terrible. You’d think I’d want to cook for 20 or more people, huh?! 😀

I took a few videos of the guys playing Madden 09 on the Wii, but I’m not going to post those. They’re funny though 🙂 Here’s a couple of still photos that I took. We had enough 3-D glasses for everyone, and big kids and little kids alike had a good time playing with them and waiting for the 3D commercial 🙂

Here’s the first round of meat on the grill…. 22 burgers, some of the sausage and hot dogs. Tim filled it up a second time!

Lots of Electronic toys here: Wii playing, iPod Touch, iPhones, Nintendo DS’s…

Having fun with 3D glasses:

I’ve lost count on what consecutive party this is that we’ve had. Tim and I have been married almost 13 years, so I’d say we have had a party at least 10 of those 12 years, and maybe 11 of those. We plan to have one next year. Unless the Saints go to the Super Bowl. If Tim’s beloved Saints ever make it, we have already told everyone we will not be having a party. We’ll lock every door in the house and tell people to go away, so we won’t miss a second of the game! As it is, I don’t get to watch a lot of the pregame or game (I did finally sit down and watch some of the second half this year though, it was a really good game). I didn’t get to see Faith Hill or Jennifer Hudson sing beforehand, and I missed the halftime show, which was fine because I’m not a Springsteen fan. I did watch the 3D commercial though. Gotta have your priorities straight. Anyway, we’re already missing football season around here. Training camp can’t come soon enough!

Well, hello to all my fellow bloggers! We’ve been offline for about 2 1/2 weeks here. We went out of town one weekend, only to return and find that our website (hambones.org) was down and we were having hardware issues. We have a couple of computers that run our website, but the primary one (which is 4 1/2 years old, btw) was not booting up. We tried buying various parts locally, then had to order stuff online. Several times. One thing turned into another, and before you know it, we basically had to start over from scratch, on both hardware and software. I say “we”, but really I mean Tim. He’s worked night and day for weeks to get things back online. We still have a long way to go, there’s still a lot of problems and things that don’t work, things that used to work before. We were several versions behind on different components, things I don’t really even understand, but Tim does. Thank goodness! Our blogs are now back up, but we aren’t able to load pictures and images for a while, nor is the email working. And a few other things that hopefully are behind the scenes and no one will notice! LOL 🙂

So — you’d think with all that time while our website and my blog was down that I would have been uber-productive, huh? Well, you’d be wrong! I enjoyed the break immensely and had considered more than once not even blogging when we did get things back up. I’m still on the fence about that. However, yesterday, Feb 3, was the four year anniversary of my blog, and I sort of hate to just “give up”. So, we’ll see. I still have a few things to say, but not nearly as many these days 🙂 In the beginning, I blogged every day. About anything and everything. I talked about my day, all the little things going on, I did every meme that came along, etc. Those days are gone. Tim doesn’t like me to blog about where we go or what we do, at least for the most part, for security reasons. I’ve lost my mojo where memes and tags are concerned. And the days of blogging daily are long gone. We’ll see how long I do keep going though.

Back to the break – I should have gotten a lot of stuff done. But, I didn’t do hardly any of the “projects” that I should have done. I haven’t worked on the piles of paper and receipts and magazines that are overflowing around here. I watched a lot of TV, played a lot of Wii, read a fair amount (7 for the year, so far), and generally enjoyed the break. I did have my computer, so I was able to keep up with other blogs and Facebook. But I didn’t miss blogging here, so that leads me to believe that it may be time…

Ok, so, we’re back, but hobbling and limping along. If you have an error or notice something that is not working, please let me know. We still have a long way to go, but right now, Tim needs a break. He’s worked nonstop on this thing, night and day, and until the wee hours of the morning, for too long now. He’s a keeper though, don’t you think?! 🙂

Test post

Do any of you keep an inventory of certain items in your home? Do you have some type of inventory system, or a video recording, of your possessions in case of theft or fire? We did this years ago, but really need to update it.

I also want to do an updated inventory of some of the things we own, like books, movies and games. Years ago, I downloaded a free movie inventory system, since we had started buying quite a few VHS and then DVD movies. When I got my laptop a couple of years ago with Vista on it, I never could get that old program to run on it. So, me being the procrastinator that I am, I never got it updated and never got it running on my new computer. I decided this week that I would work on rectifying that. I found a free program online to download, and I downloaded it last night to my laptop. I don’t know if I will like it or if it will work for us, but so far it looks pretty good. It can keep track of books, movies, games and cd’s. I am keeping an inventory of the books we own at GoodReads.com, but I am going to try to get this program updated with our movies and games (since we got the Wii last year, we’ve bought a few games). It’s that time of year, you know. I always get a bit of the organizing, cleaning up, throwing out, decluttering vibe going this time of year, in January 😀

How about you? Do you have a listing of any of these at your house? Whether in a Quicken inventory type system, on a video recording for insurance purposes, or just a list in Word or Excel? Or are you not like us, and you don’t have a lot of books, movies, games, and music CD’s peeking out of every corner of your house?! Leave me a comment and let me know. I’ll be busy entering books, movies and games into my new inventory system 🙄

Have a great day 🙂